North Bergen Board of Education officials will meet sometime next week to determine their strategy after a New Jersey Office of Administrative Law judge decided last week that a North Bergen High School teacher should be reinstated even though she was supervising a classroom where students were engaged in sexual activity.
Administrative Law Judge Daniel B. McKeown ruled last week that the blame for the March, 2001 incident should not be placed on Debbie Noone, a veteran of 13 years in the North Bergen school district, but rather the children involved in the "sex game" that was being conducted in the classroom that day.
On that date, Noone was doing paperwork at her desk, supervising her special education class, when the students started to play a "sex game" of "truth or dare," which resulted in a circle of students surrounding a 14-year-old girl. The girl allegedly performed oral sex on a teenage boy while two other teenage boys were fondling and kissing her breasts.
In his 18-page decision released last week, McKeown stated that the students should be blamed because they "conspired to block the teacher’s view" while the apparent sex game was going on.
But North Bergen school officials vehemently disagree with the judge’s ruling.
"The disagreement I have with the judge’s ruling is that he found her without any blame," said Nicholas Sacco, who is the assistant superintendent of schools and also the township’s mayor. "Other things could have been done in terms of her culpability, coming short of termination. We feel that it was a small classroom, with 10 to 12 students in the room. Something wrong was going on, and the person in charge should have been held to blame for it."
Noone was suspended without pay after the incident. She has been fighting to get fully reinstated as a teacher ever since the incident. After the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office last October ruled that Noone did not have to face criminal charges for the incident, she was allowed to return to work, only not in any classroom situations.
Efforts to reach Noone were unsuccessful by press time. She was quoted in a local newspaper as saying that she "didn’t think it was fair that they brought charges to begin with."
No responsibility
Sacco said that he didn’t think the incident "merited termination," but that there should have been some penalty issued.
"I think we could have accepted the fact that she was going to be reinstated, but the fact that she didn’t share responsibility for what happened is what I find very disturbing," Sacco said. "She still had to be responsible for what goes on in that classroom."
Superintendent of Schools Peter Fischbach was on vacation last week and unavailable for comment. Sacco said that the Board of Education is considering an appeal of McKeown’s decision and will make a determination once Fischbach returns.
Board of Education attorney Joseph Ryglicki has already filed an exception to the McKeown’s ruling with William Librera, the state commissioner of education.
The three students involved in the incident were suspended from school for anywhere between 10 days and three weeks, but have all since returned to school.
"We will have to make a determination very soon about our next course of action," Sacco said. "I wouldn’t call this a setback, just a disagreement and disappointment with the judge’s decision."